I wondered and asked myself: how much money in dollars is actually in the world? After researching, I found that the answer is much more interesting than we expected.

When calculated in US currency, approximately 37 trillion dollars are circulating worldwide. This includes physical cash—coins, banknotes, and money in bank accounts. But that’s only part of it. When you include investment vehicles, derivative products, and cryptocurrencies, the figure goes beyond 1.2 quadrillion. That means that if we’re only talking about physical money and ask how many dollars there are in the world, the answer is around 6.6 trillion.

Once you add bank deposits, liquid assets, and other money-supply measures, the numbers reach dozens of trillions. There is this much money in the world, but what’s interesting is: what is our share of this money? With global wealth becoming so concentrated, as an average person, where do we fall in this world’s money system?

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency holdings still make up only a small part of this huge pool of money, but they keep growing. When thinking about what’s coming next, the question of how much money there is in the world in dollars may actually be the wrong question. Maybe what we should be asking is: what will the future of this money system be?